Starting with the beginning of the COVID pandemic last year, manufacturing of electronic devices and hardware has been throttled all over the world across pretty much all relevant industries, and the significant shortage of electronic components that are crucial for manufacturing has been one of the primary reasons for that. And while many have estimated that those shortages might end soon, it doesn’t seem like that might be the case.
Foxconn is the supplier and manufacturer of many tech heavyweights around the world (including Apple, Microsoft, and Google, among others), and in the company’s recent investors call (via Nikkei), CEO Young Liu said that though supply of components in the first couple of months of 2021 has been relatively better, it’s going to become more constrained going forward, and that the shortfall is actually going to continue until at least mid-2022.
Considering the fact that both the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S have also seen their supplies being constrained (while similar issues have also been faced by PC graphics cards), partly due to the component shortages, this obviously affects prospective consumers. The scale of these shortages is going to be much more widespread though, and will be felt outside the games industry as well.